Return to Star Valley

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “Your wife sent me to tell you to start the coals,” she told Matt. “Those steaks aren’t going to grill themselves.”

  Matt’s relaxed grin took her by surprise. She might have expected thick tension between the two men with their history, but they seemed to be getting along like a couple of hogs rolling in mud.

  “Yeah, she’s a bossy little thing, isn’t she?” he answered, looking toward the house and his wife with such an expression of joy and love on his face that tears burned behind her eyes.

  Was it happiness she felt for her brother and his bride? Or envy?

  Whatever, she blinked them back as he headed toward the house. “What were you two talking about?” Her voice came out a little ragged around the edges, but Zack didn’t appear to notice.

  “Oh, this and that. I told him I’m interested in buying this little filly for my ranch when she’s trained. He told me he’d think about it.”

  “Did you…did you talk about Melanie?”

  “Yeah.”

  She frowned impatiently at him. “And?”

  He shrugged. “I told him I didn’t leave with her, but he’s a hard man to read. I think he’s far more concerned about you than about Melanie at this point. I tried to assure him my intentions toward you are honorable.”

  “Oh. That’s really too bad,” she teased.

  His laughter sounded rough. “If I had my way, I’d drag you back into that barn over there, find a nice soft pile of hay and then…” He whispered something in her ear that sent heat rushing through her like the blast from a welder’s torch.

  She shivered in reaction, but before she could answer, raised voices sounded on the patio, destroying the moment. With a groan of resignation, she eased away from the sultry promise of that low voice in her ear.

  “That would be brother number two. The hotheaded one. Your hay pile idea sounds like a very smart one. Let’s go.”

  She yanked his hand to lead him toward the barn and outbuildings, but he shook his head, gripping her fingers. “Come on, sweetheart. We’ve come this far. Don’t chicken out on me now.”

  She blew out a breath. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  Squaring her shoulders, she walked beside Zack toward the house, her hand still wrapped in his. They were almost to the patio when Jesse marched out to meet them.

  She had expected him to be angry, but the sheer cold fury in his eyes stunned her.

  “Get away from him, Cass,” Jesse growled. “Right now. Go on into the house.”

  An answering anger flared and she stepped forward, chin out. “I haven’t taken orders from you since I was fourteen years old. I’m not about to start now.”

  “Do it, Cassie.”

  She was dismayed—and disgusted—to see dark violence in his eyes, etched into his features.

  “Forget it,” she snapped. “You’re a little old for settling things with your fists, don’t you think? Not to mention the fact that around here you’re supposed to be upholding the law, not shattering it.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing. Slater, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me down to the station.”

  Zack’s laughter held little humor. “You’re arresting me for dating your sister? Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?”

  “I’m not arresting you for anything. I just have some questions to ask you.”

  Cassie stepped between them. “Stop it. This is ridiculous. We’re here to share Sunday dinner with the family, and that’s just what we’re going to do. If you have a problem with that, Jess, maybe you need to go eat somewhere else.”

  * * *

  Zack certainly didn’t need Cassie to fight his battles for him but he was absurdly touched that she stood up to her brother, chin up and her hand still in his, clenching as if she was ready to take Jesse on if he made one wrong move.

  He wanted to kiss her right there, but he had a pretty strong feeling that that wouldn’t go over well given the current climate.

  He glanced toward the wide flagstone patio where the rest of her family gathered and the first flickers of unease stirred to life in his gut.

  Something was wrong.

  Seriously wrong.

  Matt and his wife both looked stunned, their faces ashen, and the other woman—Jesse’s fiancée, Sarah—looked as if she was ready to cry.

  He jerked back to the heated conversation next to him. Cassie was still upbraiding her brother for his lack of manners and his immaturity.

  He held a hand out to stop her. “What’s going on?” he asked slowly. “This isn’t about some personal vendetta, is it?”

  The police chief’s voice was hard as a whetstone. “No. I’m investigating a homicide, Slater. And right now you’re my prime suspect. I need you to come in for questioning.”

  Beside him, he felt Cassie jerk her shoulders back. “A homicide? Are you crazy? We haven’t had a homicide in Salt River in years.”

  “Right. This one is about ten years old. Remember that skeleton Ron Atkins found a few months ago in the foothills of his ranch? The state crime lab was finally able to make an identification.”

  A feeling of dread settled over him. “And?”

  “And Matt wasted his money getting a divorce in absentia. Apparently he’s been a widower all these years. The bones belonged to Melanie.”

  The color leached from Cassie’s face. “Oh, no.”

  “After her fingerprints were found on some of the items found with her body, the state crime lab ran dental records and they matched perfectly. No question it was Melanie.”

  * * *

  She was going to be sick.

  The smell of charcoal and starter fluid wafting from the grill suddenly seemed greasy—the heat of the afternoon too heavy and oppressive—and she pulled her hand away from Zack’s to press it to the churning of her stomach.

  Melanie was dead. Murdered. She could hardly believe it.

  She had hated her manipulative, amoral sister-in-law passionately even before she thought Zack had run off with her, but she had never wished her dead.

  All these years when she thought of Melanie it had been with malice and hateful anger for the future Cassie thought she had stolen from her. And all these years, the object of her hatred had been dead, buried in a shallow grave just a few miles away from the Diamond Harte.

  Her stomach heaved again and she had to breathe hard to battle back the nausea.

  She shifted her horrified gaze from her brother to Zack and found him watching her with an odd, stony expression on his features. It was only after she looked closer and saw the deep shadows of hurt in his eyes that she realized she had subconsciously stepped away from him as if she couldn’t wait to put as much distance as possible between them.

  She wanted to apologize but she was afraid it was too late.

  “I didn’t kill Melanie.” He addressed his words to Jesse but his gold-flecked eyes locked with hers. “What motive would I possibly have?”

  “That’s something I’m sure we can discuss down at the station.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Jesse stepped forward, and she recognized the barely restrained violence simmering under the surface of his calm. “I don’t believe that was a request, Slater.”

  “You really think that gives you enough evidence to arrest me, only because I was the last person seen with the woman a decade ago?”

  A muscle flexed in Jesse’s jaw but he didn’t answer, which she supposed was answer enough.

  “In that case, as I said, I’ll have to pass,” Zack murmured, his voice dripping with irony. “I’m always happy to cooperate with the law. I’ll answer any questions, but unless the rules have changed since the last time I heard the drill, I believe I have the right to an attorney present for our little chat. I can send my plane to Denver for him and have him here in a few hours. Would that be convenient for you?”

  She recognized his statement for what it was, a not-so-subtle reminder to Jesse and everyone else—includin
g her—that he was no longer the dirt-poor ranch hand he’d been a decade ago, that he had money and influence now and wouldn’t be railroaded into a murder charge.

  Jesse looked as if he couldn’t wait for an excuse to take a swing at him, but Matt stepped forward and rested a warning hand on his shoulder.

  The motion jarred her out of the dream-like, surreal state she’d slipped into.

  Matt. And Lucy. Dear heavens. How was this going to affect them? Her stomach shuddered again, and she tasted bile in her throat. Poor Lucy. Though she and Matt had tried to shield her as much as possible, children at school whispered to each other. She knew they did.

  It had been hard enough on Lucy to believe her mother had abandoned her. Now, when she finally had a real family, all the talk about Melanie would resurface and Lucy would be hurt all over again.

  She blinked when she realized Zack was speaking to her in a cold, distant voice she hated.

  “I’m sure you can find a ride back to the Lost Creek, Cassie. If you’ll all excuse me, I need to make some phone calls.”

  He turned on his heels, leaving stunned silence behind him. For a moment—only a moment—she was torn by conflicting loyalties. Her family would need her. Matt and Lucy would need her.

  But she couldn’t let him leave. Not like this. She turned to follow him, but Jesse grabbed her arm.

  “Let him go,” he ordered.

  “Back off, Jess.”

  She and Sarah both said the words at exactly the same moment, only Cassie snarled like an angry bobcat while Sarah just murmured them in her soft, compelling voice.

  She was pretty sure Jesse responded more to Sarah’s request than her order, but she didn’t wait around to thank her after he let her go. With her heart pounding, she raced around the house and caught up with Zack just as he was climbing into the shiny sage-green pickup she had picked out for him.

  She skidded to a stop and stood there for a moment, scrambling for words.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally whispered, the only thing she could come up with as shock and misery choked her throat.

  His expression was grim, closed. “For what? Believing I could be capable of murdering Melanie?”

  She wanted to say she didn’t believe it. That she could never believe it. But she had to admit that a tiny dark corner of her heart—the raw bruise that had never completely healed, had never been able to completely forgive him for leaving her—raised ugly doubts.

  He had been the last one seen with Melanie. Jesse and others had seen them kissing outside the Renegade and then they had driven off together. Who knew what might have happened after that?

  She’d been tempted to wring Melanie’s neck more than a few times herself for what she’d put Matt through in their short, stormy marriage.

  No. She swallowed hard. The tender man who painted her toenails and held her so gently and blew raspberries on her stomach would never use violence against a woman.

  Never.

  She couldn’t believe it.

  “I know you couldn’t have killed her,” she said firmly.

  “But a part of you wonders, right? Unless your brother comes up with another suspect in a hurry, part of you will always wonder.”

  She opened her mouth as if to deny it, then closed it, shattering his heart into a thousand tiny pieces.

  How could he blame her? Ten years ago he had broken her heart, had left her without a word. He couldn’t blame anyone but himself if she had a hard time believing him after he betrayed her so completely.

  He couldn’t blame her but he also knew he couldn’t live with a woman unable to trust him. They couldn’t build a future on something so flimsy, or it would crumble to dust in the first hard wind.

  A bitter laugh threatened to choke him. Hard wind, hell. This accusation of murder was a tornado coming out of the blue.

  “I told you what happened that night,” he said gruffly. “She came on to me, I turned her down. I couldn’t let her drive home in her condition and I didn’t want to leave her drunk at the Renegade at the mercy of any unscrupulous cowboy who came along. I tried to give her a ride home. When she wouldn’t let up, I finally kicked her out of my truck. Whatever happened to her after that is anybody’s guess. I didn’t kill her.”

  Even as he said the words, deep down in the pit of his gut, he knew differently. He was as responsible for her death as if he’d been the one who pulled the trigger.

  She must have run into trouble after he’d driven away. He should never have left her unprotected and alone on the road, no matter how much she might have provoked him.

  A good man, a decent man, never would have abandoned a woman alone in the dark.

  A no-account drifter, on the other hand, would do just that.

  “Go on back to your family, Cass,” he said gently. “This will be tough on them. They’re going to need you.”

  She glared at him, but there were tears gathering in her eyes. His Cassie, who hardly ever cried. His heart wept along with her.

  “Damn you, Zack. Don’t you do this to me again.”

  “Do what?”

  “Push me away. Make my decisions for me. You didn’t give me the choice to stand beside you once. Don’t do it again.”

  He couldn’t drag her through this kind of ugliness. He had to push her away, no matter how badly he wanted to yank her against him and bury her head against his chest.

  If he listened hard, he could almost hear the sound of his dreams shattering around his feet. The future stretched out ahead of him, bleak and empty. A vast gray expanse without her laughter and her sparkling blue eyes and the miracle of her love.

  He had never deserved any of it. All this time he thought the money and power he’d spent a decade accumulating had made a difference, that he would finally be worthy of her.

  But she was right all this time. Everything he had accomplished didn’t matter at all.

  He would always be the worthless son of a drunk saddle bum. And now he was under suspicion for murder.

  No. It was better this way.

  “Goodbye, Cassie. I didn’t say that before and I’m sorry for that. I should have.”

  He slid into the truck but her outstretched hand kept him from closing the door behind him.

  “You’re…you’re leaving?”

  “Not right away. But I’m going to be busy for a while trying to fight this, then I’ll be heading back to Denver. I’m sure you won’t want to stay at the Lost Creek anymore now that the sale has gone through. Claire is capable of taking over for you—you’ve more than fulfilled your part of our deal. I’ll send your check here.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  Tears seeped from her eyes, trickling down her cheeks into the corner of her mouth. Everything in him cried out to reach for her, but he knew he couldn’t.

  If he did—if he touched her—he wouldn’t be able to let her go.

  “Take it. Open your café. Be happy.”

  At his words, her outstretched hand curled into a fist and she pressed it against her stomach.

  He closed the door of the truck and started it up, then drove away from the Diamond Harte without looking back.

  * * *

  This was the sort of day she usually loved.

  Cassie stood at the sink in the modern kitchen of the Rendezvous Ranch, gazing out the window at the rain drizzling down outside. The sky was dark for late afternoon, the trees dripping heavily.

  When she was a girl, her mother used to call these stormy summer afternoons “do nothing” days and that’s exactly what they would do. Curl up on the porch swing with a book or play go-fish at the kitchen table or scavenge through each item in the cedar chest that always graced the foot of her parents’ bed, brimming with history.

  Those days had been rare and precious, when she could have her busy mother to herself. She closed her eyes, remembering soft hands, a tender smile, a lap just perfect for cuddling in.

  Her parents had died when she was twelve, on the cusp of bec
oming a woman. She used to wonder if being without her mother during those critical teen years had somehow left her broken, a puzzle with a few pieces missing.

  Growing up in a household of big, macho men, she had never had anyone to give her advice about being a girl. About how to talk to boys and what to wear and how to fix her hair. As a result, she had treated most of the boys she went to school with just like she treated her brothers. She hadn’t known any better. And they had responded in kind, considering her just one of the gang.

  Maybe that’s why Zack had so completely swept her off her feet. He’d treated her like a woman, even from the beginning.

  No. No matter what had happened in her past, she somehow knew that she would have fallen just as hard for the tawny, dangerous cowboy with the sweet smile.

  If her mother hadn’t died in that crash, what advice would she give now to her heartbroken daughter?

  Forget him and move on? Or go after him, even though he wanted nothing to do with her?

  Ten years ago if she had the first inkling where he might have gone, she would have gone after him, no question about it. But she had changed over the years.

  This time she knew exactly where he was—still hunkered down at the Lost Creek since Jesse had ordered him not to leave town until he was either arrested or cleared in Melanie’s murder.

  She might know where he was, but she couldn’t go to him. Not this time.

  He didn’t want her beside him.

  No matter how she tried to convince him she knew he had nothing to do with Melanie’s death, he still pushed her away. She thought she knew why—once more his damned nobility gave him some stupid, misguided notion that she deserved better than a man under suspicion for murder.

  There was no one better. Why couldn’t he see that? Zack Slater was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

  She sighed and watched the sky weep while her heart wanted to cry right along with it. The rain she usually loved only reinforced how miserable and off-kilter she felt here.

  It was kind of Wade to offer her a job at the Rendezvous, but she missed the Lost Creek. She missed her little cabin. She missed Jean and Kip and Claire and Greta.